Lessons

Presenters

Chris Cowperthwaite | Founder & CEO, Groundforce

Chris is an entrepreneur and ground campaign consultant. He is an expert on open team building and campaign technology for distributed community organizing. Chris conducted his graduate thesis on digital systems for peer-to-peer fundraising and has since worked with over 100 political and not-for-profit ground campaigns in Canada and the United States.

- Strategy: The Groundforce® strategy process results in your campaign plan, including budget, timeline and core messages. - Team Building: Groundforce helps you build an open team and draws on a network of campaign and creative professionals to deliver the talent to succeed.- Groundforce® Workshop: Groundforce surveys the campaign tech marketplace, tests new products and delivers a suite of the top tools & training for your team.

===Chair, Open Democracy Projectwww.opendemocracy.team / www.democracykit.org===The Open Democracy Project is a citizen-led community working to empower everyday citizens to drive change through political action. Its flagship project, DemocracyKit, shares expert advice and campaign technology with any campaign team running for municipal office and maintains an open online library to build on that knowledge from one election to the next.

===Other Community Service===Chris is the Loran Scholars Foundation Alumni Coordinator in the Greater Toronto Area. Chris served as a Board Director at the Loran Scholars Foundation from 2013 - 2015 and Ten Oaks Project from 2008 - 2010. He holds an MBA from the Schulich School of Business (York University), a B.Sc. (Honours) and Diploma in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Waterloo, and is a Jostens Loran Scholar ('99).